Chloe Grace Moretz shares her heartbreaking battle with cystic acne
If you’re one of the 85 per cent of the population who’s dealt with acne at some point or another, you’d know it can seriously rock your confidence. So, for actress Chloe Grace Moretz, growing up with her mug on camera (while simultaneously battling cystic breakouts) seriously took a toll on her mental health.
“There was a meeting called when I was 13 – I had horrible, horrible skin,” she told The Cut. “The director and the producers, all these men, sat there and stared at me in this makeup trailer. They were like, ‘what are we going to do?’ I sat there like this little girl.”
They decided that the best course of action was to digitally edit out her blemishes:
“It’s shocking that they wouldn’t just let [my acne] be on screen and be the reality of the character who is 13 or 14 years old. They ended up spending thousands of dollars to cover it and to create this false sense of reality about beauty.”
And understandably, Chloe didn’t take the criticism well.
“It was probably one of my hardest moments, just terrible,” she said. “I was just trying to find the confidence to get out of that chair and bare my soul as an actor.”
These days, she’s on a mission to end the acne-shaming. Not only is she fronting SKII’Ss Bare Skin Project (the campaign was shot sans makeup and retouching), she’s embracing her imperfections in an effort to inspire other young women to do the same.
“[Acne] is just a reality,” she says. “Transparency is really nice – to be able to look at someone and say, ‘You have that? I have that too!’ The understanding that we’re the same is really comforting and is really wonderful. It stops you from feeling ostracised.”
